Medford woman's murder trial expected to wrap up

Thursday

Dec 12, 2013 at 11:00 AMDec 12, 2013 at 11:04 AM

YREKA, Calif. — Prosecutors rested their case Wednesday against Medford resident Patricia MacCallum, who is on trial for the 2012 murder of her husband, Chris MacCallum, and the defense announced it would not call any witnesses.

YREKA, Calif. — Prosecutors rested their case Wednesday against Medford resident Patricia MacCallum, who is on trial for the 2012 murder of her husband, Chris MacCallum, and the defense announced it would not call any witnesses.

Closing arguments in the nearly four-week-old trial are expected today.

Defense attorney William Duncan spent time Tuesday and Wednesday trying to convince jurors that police had been lax in their pursuit of other potential suspects in the case.

On Wednesday, Siskiyou County Sheriff's Office detective Jeff Moser and two witnesses testified about Chris Lubbers, one of the potential suspects named by Duncan.

Prosecutor Joe Allison called two witnesses Wednesday afternoon who testified that they had played a table-top fantasy game with Chris Lubbers on Fridays in November of 2012, including the Friday night when Chris MacCallum was last seen alive.

On Tuesday, Sgt. James Randall of the Siskiyou County Sheriff's Office, told jurors that when he interviewed Patricia MacCallum on the day her husband's body was found at an Applegate campground, her story contained inconsistencies.

MacCallum told officers she and her half-sister had left Chris MacCallum at his campsite with the intention to return the next day to pick him up. But when she returned, she told police, her husband was gone and she didn't see anything unusual. She assumed he had moved to another campsite or got a ride from somebody, she told officers.

Randall testified that when he visited the campground before interviewing MacCallum, he saw tent poles and stakes scattered about, including in the campfire pit.

"I told her I had seen things at the campsite that would have raised suspicions," Randall said.

Duncan, on cross examination, questioned whether it would have been easy to see the poles and stakes at the time MacCallum visited the campground, which she told officers was during pre-dawn hours with overcast skies.

Randall also testified Wednesday that an ATM surveillance video taken along the main route to the campground road did not show MacCallum's car during the period of time she claimed to have visited the campsite.

The possible routes to the campground were the subject of much discussion throughout the case.